This invention is directed towards a wood working jig. More particularly and without limitation, this invention is directed towards a wood working jig for making shelf holes.
Various shelving systems are old and well known in the art. Common shelving systems are made of wood, pressboard, plywood or other composite materials and are manufactured by screwing an opposing top and bottom to opposing sidewalls so as to form a frame. Once this frame is assembled the shelves are then glued and screwed in place. While this manufacturing method produces a sturdy and rigid shelving system the shelves are permanently affixed and therefore can not be easily moved.
To allow for variable shelf spacing, shelf pin hole systems were developed. These systems utilize a plurality of shelf pin holes which are drilled into the interior surface of the opposing sidewalls. Most often, these shelf pin holes are drilled at varying heights in two columns on each sidewall, each column spaced inwardly from the respective front and back edge of the sidewall. To position a shelf using this system, a user selects a height for the shelf and inserts a shelf pin into each of the four corresponding shelf pin holes for that height. The shelf pin holes matingly and frictionally receive the shelf pins which partially extend outwardly from the shelf pin holes. The shelf is then placed on top of the outwardly extending shelf pins thereby providing support in each corner of the shelf. This system allows the user to vary the spacing of the shelves by simply selecting a different row of shelf pin holes.
Manufacturers of shelving systems often drill these shelf pin holes into the interior surfaces of the sidewalls as part of the manufacturing process. While this is convenient, many times additional shelf pin holes are necessary or desired, such as in the case of an existing shelf pin tearing-out, or when the pattern of shelf pin holes are not at the desired location. To assist in drilling these additional shelf pin holes, various shelf pin hole jigs have been developed.
A common conventional shelf pin hole jig comprises a flat piece of plastic or composite material having a plurality of holes spaced therein. This flat device is then laid against the interior surface of the sidewall of the shelving system and a shelf pin bit is used to drill the shelf pin holes. While somewhat effective, problems exist in this process. First, the conventional shelf pin hole jig which comprises merely of a flat body is difficult to properly and accurately align and the jig provides very little guidance for the drill bit which makes it difficult to properly place the hole shelf pin hole, and easy to angularly misalign the shelf pin hole. In addition, these jigs require the use of a specially designed, complex, expensive and difficult to use shelf pin bit that has multiple moving parts. Using these shelf pin bits is undesirable as they often can break or malfunction because of wood chips getting stuck in the moving parts of the bit. In addition, these shelf pin bits are long in length which is also undesirable as many times space is limited when drilling shelf pin holes.
Therefore, an objective of the invention is to provide a shelf pin hole jig that is more easily and accurately aligned than conventional jigs.
Another objective of the invention is to provide a shelf pin hole jig that allows for easier and more accurate alignment of the shelf pin hole itself.
Another objective of the invention is to provide a shelf pin hole jig that is more economical than prior art jigs.
These and other objectives will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the following description, drawing and claims.